Since his surgery is in about 7 hours...
After April's funeral I went to eat at Denny's with the Jodies and Julina. I got a call from a 703 number but I just figured it was a wrong number. But the first 3 digits were 391, which to me meant it was a long standing number since those three digits haven't been in use for a long time. Weird logic, but it made me think something was up. So I called the number, and I got a voice message saying I had reached ::garbled name:: Hospital. I knew Dad was talking to their personel people, and I thought maybe they were trying to reach me about an application. But I still call both of my parents on their cell phones. Neither answered. I called Jess to see if it was somehow her calling me since we had been text messaging each other back and forth that day, it's not from her.
About half an hour later the same number calls and it's Dad. I tell him I called the number and it said it was a hospital. But he was talking to me so obviously it couldn't be bad right? I asked if he was doing a job there since he's a carpenter and he's done work for hospitals before. He's sitting in the hall of the ER in a wheelchair and he thought he'd tell me something is wrong with his heart and they're trying to see if it's a heart attack. Then he hung up the phone suddenly and well, I freaked out.
This is a picture of my dad. I love him to death and have always been a daddy's girl, but damn if he's not stoic and stubborn as all hell. So the fact that he called me at all worried me more than anything, since this is the kind of thing he would never tell me about directly, but would slip out months or years later through random conversation. It took 4 days of him in the hospital and only 2 doctors visits during that time for them to tell him he didn't have a heart attack.
He has atrial fibrilation, which means that some cells of his heart fire at the wrong time and the top part of his heart starts quivering instead of getting blood to the bottom half of the heart to pump to the lungs and the rest of the body. The biggest problems with this are 1. The heart shouldn't beat at 200 beats per minute for very long, the heart just can't put up with it. 2. If the blood's not going out it's pooling and clotting, and that clot can go to the lungs, brain, back to the heart etc. He had a few more episodes in the hospital, then was given medicine and sent on his merry way.
A week later he's back in the hospital. Apparently the doctors were being nice and gave Dad some free samples of a medication, not mentioning that he needs to make sure he gets his prescription filled on time because skipping a dose will give him the same symptoms that brought him to the hospital in the first place. If I had known I could have told him and I'm just a student, but oh well.
There's a surgery called ablation that can fix his problem. Kaiser, our evil HMO denied him the surgery. There's a good chance it had to do with the fact that he's 64, and at 65 he becomes Medicare's problem. But over Thanksgiving Dad had another episode and because of what kaiser had told him he wasn't sure if he would be covered at a non-Kaiser hospital. Since he was on the road to Pittsburgh at the time he decided to wait it out in the back of Uncle Tommy's SUV for 2 1/2 hours. Then he would up with a clot in his leg and had to go to the hospital.
Now they've approved the surgery since he has a good enough case that he could probably sue them. His surgery is in the morning. I'm nervous for him but at the same time this morning can't come soon enough. He's started having more episodes, now they happen while he's sleeping. The other night he woke up with a clot in his foot.
For the procedure they stick a catheter up his femoral artery in his leg and put it up into his heart, then kill the cells that are firing at the wrong time and causing the fibrilation. There's a chance he'll wake up with a pacemaker, but it could certainly be much worse. There's a chance of other things, but I'm not going to bother dealing with those unless it comes to that.
Sorry for posting two long entries in one night, but they're too important to me to put behind a cut. I'm in Reston now (obviously, I guess, since I'm driving him in the morning) and things seem to be going well here. Just, if possible keep my dad in your thoughts and wish him luck!
About half an hour later the same number calls and it's Dad. I tell him I called the number and it said it was a hospital. But he was talking to me so obviously it couldn't be bad right? I asked if he was doing a job there since he's a carpenter and he's done work for hospitals before. He's sitting in the hall of the ER in a wheelchair and he thought he'd tell me something is wrong with his heart and they're trying to see if it's a heart attack. Then he hung up the phone suddenly and well, I freaked out.
This is a picture of my dad. I love him to death and have always been a daddy's girl, but damn if he's not stoic and stubborn as all hell. So the fact that he called me at all worried me more than anything, since this is the kind of thing he would never tell me about directly, but would slip out months or years later through random conversation. It took 4 days of him in the hospital and only 2 doctors visits during that time for them to tell him he didn't have a heart attack.
He has atrial fibrilation, which means that some cells of his heart fire at the wrong time and the top part of his heart starts quivering instead of getting blood to the bottom half of the heart to pump to the lungs and the rest of the body. The biggest problems with this are 1. The heart shouldn't beat at 200 beats per minute for very long, the heart just can't put up with it. 2. If the blood's not going out it's pooling and clotting, and that clot can go to the lungs, brain, back to the heart etc. He had a few more episodes in the hospital, then was given medicine and sent on his merry way.
A week later he's back in the hospital. Apparently the doctors were being nice and gave Dad some free samples of a medication, not mentioning that he needs to make sure he gets his prescription filled on time because skipping a dose will give him the same symptoms that brought him to the hospital in the first place. If I had known I could have told him and I'm just a student, but oh well.
There's a surgery called ablation that can fix his problem. Kaiser, our evil HMO denied him the surgery. There's a good chance it had to do with the fact that he's 64, and at 65 he becomes Medicare's problem. But over Thanksgiving Dad had another episode and because of what kaiser had told him he wasn't sure if he would be covered at a non-Kaiser hospital. Since he was on the road to Pittsburgh at the time he decided to wait it out in the back of Uncle Tommy's SUV for 2 1/2 hours. Then he would up with a clot in his leg and had to go to the hospital.
Now they've approved the surgery since he has a good enough case that he could probably sue them. His surgery is in the morning. I'm nervous for him but at the same time this morning can't come soon enough. He's started having more episodes, now they happen while he's sleeping. The other night he woke up with a clot in his foot.
For the procedure they stick a catheter up his femoral artery in his leg and put it up into his heart, then kill the cells that are firing at the wrong time and causing the fibrilation. There's a chance he'll wake up with a pacemaker, but it could certainly be much worse. There's a chance of other things, but I'm not going to bother dealing with those unless it comes to that.
Sorry for posting two long entries in one night, but they're too important to me to put behind a cut. I'm in Reston now (obviously, I guess, since I'm driving him in the morning) and things seem to be going well here. Just, if possible keep my dad in your thoughts and wish him luck!